r, profound and infantine,
lofty and degraded, like the Church itself, which conserved these
sentiments. It is an intensely religious poem, and yet more theological
than Christian, and full of classical allusions to pagan heroes and
sages,--a most remarkable production considering the age, and, when we
remember that it is without a prototype in any language, a glorious
monument of reviving literature, both original and powerful.

Its appearance was of course an epoch, calling out the admiration of
Italians, and of all who could understand it,--of all who appreciated
its moral wisdom in every other country of Europe. And its fame has
been steadily increasing, although I fear much of the popular
enthusiasm is exaggerated and unfelt. One who can read Italian well may
see its "fiery emphasis and depth," its condensed thought and language,
its supernal scorn and supernal love, its bitterness and its
forgiveness; but very few sympathize with its theology or its
philosophy, or care at all for the men whose crimes he punishes, and
whose virtues he rewards.

But there is great interest in the man, as well as in the poem which he
made the mirror of his life, and the register of his sorrows and of
those speculations in which he sought to banish the remembrance of his
misfortunes. His life, like his poem, is an epic. We sympathize with his
resentments, "which exile and poverty made perpetually fresh." "The
sincerity of his early passion for Beatrice," says Hallam, "pierces
through the veil of allegory which surrounds her, while the memory of
his injuries pursues him into the immensity of eternal light; and even
in the company of saints and angels his unforgiving spirit darkens at
the name of Florence.... He combines the profoundest feelings of
religion with those patriotic recollections which were suggested by the
reappearance of the illustrious dead."

Next to Michael Angelo he was the best of all famous Italians, stained
by no marked defects but bitterness, pride, and scorn; while his piety,
his patriotism, and elevation of soul stand out in marked contrast with
the selfishness and venality and hypocrisy and cruelty of the leading
men in the history of his times. "He wrote with his heart's blood;" he
wrote in poverty, exile, grief, and neglect; he wrote like an inspired
prophet of old. He seems to have been specially raised up to exalt
virtue, and vindicate the ways of God to man, and prepare the way for a
new civilization. He